Afghanistan

Fewer poppies, for the present

Why Afghan farmers may produce less opium, this year at least

IN APRIL last year, fields of nodding opium poppies lined every major road in Nangarhar, in eastern Afghanistan. The province produced more opium than any other, contributing to the second-biggest crop in the country's history—and 90% of the world's harvest. This year, Nangarhar's fields are more likely to be growing wheat, or lying fallow. By one estimate, the province has seen a 70% decrease in the area sown with poppies. Can it be that Hamid Karzai, the country's first democratically elected president, has at last begun to turn back the floral tide?

Two surveys released last month—by Britain and the United Nations' drugs agency (UNODC)—suggest this might be so. The British surveyed some 250 farmers across five provinces. They found that nine out of ten had grown poppies last year, but fewer than four out of ten were growing them this year. A mere 6% of the farmers' cultivable land had been sown with poppy seed, compared with 34% last year. The UN survey ranged wider, and found poppy cultivation static or down in all but five of Afghanistan's 32 provinces.

Mr Karzai, who declared a jihad against opium after his election last October, can take some credit for the promised success. The British study attributed the growing reluctance of Afghans to plant poppy primarily to a belief that the government was “more serious this year in its intent to reduce poppy cultivation.”

After three years of thumb-twiddling since the Taliban's demise, the government and its foreign backers have adopted credible counter-narcotics strategies. Last year, the provincial governors eradicated some 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of opium crop, in a scheme that was patchily observed and riven with corruption. This year, after stern words from Mr Karzai, some of the governors have been more effective—as the UN will soon try to verify. In Nangarhar, the police chief of the provincial capital, a former warlord called Hazrat Ali, says he has sacked several local police chiefs for failing to enforce the ban.

Last year, a separate eradication team—trained by an American security company—was a shambles. Farmers sowed their fields with landmines and rocketed the team's camp. Now, the counter-narcotics men are better equipped. A unit trained by Britain's elite Special Air Service has proved a quieter and more deadly success. It was responsible for most of the 75 tonnes of opiates seized by the government in the last year, and for destroying some 80 heroin laboratories. Even so, there was a shoot-out near Kandahar this week.

The British study concluded that it is not interdiction attempts that have encouraged farmers to abandon poppies. Rather, many farmers expect the government to reward them for giving up the crop. In Nangarhar, for example, the report found that “local power-brokers” had bribed farmers to abandon poppies with a promise of lots of aid. Western aid agencies recently gave warning that with $300m of aid pledged to eradicating poppies, but only $120m to secure alternative livelihoods, such promises were unrealistic. So the British report concedes that there is “a strong potential” for a resurgence in cultivation in the province in 2005-06.

One reason for caution is that across Afghanistan last year many farmers grew poppy for the first time, with little skill, in unfavourable soils and in places too remote for the main drug traffickers to get to. All these farmers could abandon the crop without the overall yield falling dramatically. Indeed, given fair growing conditions, it could even rise; only a number of devastating poppy blights stopped last year's crop from being the biggest ever.

Another reason to be cautious is that Afghan opium dealers have shown a remarkable deftness in their manipulation of the market. In the year before its demise, the Taliban regime banned opium cultivation, enforcing the prohibition by both bullying and bribing farmers with false promises. This pushed up prices—and therefore the value of the regime's own stockpiles. With many dealers still at large, a similar manipulation may be under way. They typically guarantee their supply by advancing cash to growers before the planting season. This year, suspiciously, none of the farmers questioned by the British admitted receiving any advance. The opium war is very far from won.